1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for processing data feeds, and more particularly, to a method and related system for processing data feeds within a contact application of a mobile device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the evolution of Internet technologies, real-time or near real-time interaction has become essential not only for business applications, but also for social networking and personal life.
Of the most recently popular technologies is the concept of a data feed: a mechanism for users to receive updated data from various sources, commonly used by real-time applications on the world-wide web (also called a “web data feed” or “web feed”). A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content over the world-wide web (Internet). Content providers (or content distributors) “syndicate” or publish web feed links on their websites, which end users can subscribe to. The kinds of content delivered by a web feed are typically HTML (webpage content) or links to webpages and other kinds of digital media, including photos (still images), videos, and audio files.
In the typical scenario of using web feeds according to related art, users browse to various websites in order to view the recently-updated web feed content, logging in to each site (when needed, such as in social networking sites) to view the updated content. What's more, the majority of websites are difficult to browse on the smaller displays of today's compact mobile devices, such as those on mobile phones, portable digital assistants (PDAs), PDA phones, smart phones, and touch screen phones.
There are software tools enabling users to subscribe to and collect web feeds to be accessible in one place, known as web (data) feed aggregators. One example of a web feed aggregator is Spokeo (www.spokeo.com). Another example is one of Helios, a US-based Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). MySpace's integration with Helio has created a dedicated MySpace Mobile application (example shown in FIG. 1) installed on mobile devices subscribing to Helios' mobile service. The MySpace Mobile application 100, however, is a dedicated application designed to work only with MySpace data feeds, and receives information (for example, 115 and 125 in FIG. 1) only from other MySpace users (110 and 120, respectively). In effect, it is simply a standalone MySpace viewer. Furthermore, such a user experience implementation requires the user to specifically enter the MySpace Mobile application in order to view the single data feed.
From the above problems and examples, it is clear that while access to a data feed from a mobile device is a step in the right direction, there still exists much room for better user experiences and improvements to the access to real-time data feeds on the world-wide web.